We received a letter from a place called Togul. It was written by Yelena Johannovna Bersch. Greetings from afar, which turned our minds, the minds of all generations of Russian-Germans, back to that horrible times of the “labour armies”. Greetings from a person that loved his family and his life. Greetings – and a farewell at the same time.
“After the forced settlement of the Germans from the Volga to Siberia in 1941 our family found itself in Togul in the Altai region. In January 1942 our father, Johannes Schwabauer, was fetched to the labour army. In December of the same year I also became a victim of this compulsory call-up. In 1943 I received a letter from my father, in which he expressed his deep regret that this great misfortune had also befallen me. Together with his letter he sent me a poem. He was able to read and write, had attended the secondary school and already composed little short stories and verses at earlier times. He dedicated the following poem to me, his 18 year-old daughter:
“HOPE”
Golden rays of sunshine
Penetrate the forest
Cast dark shadows
On the mats of grass
The cheerful twittering of the birds
The indegenious sound of bells
Unburden one’s mind
Relieve one’s pain
I am seized with hope
I take fresh courage
I want to live
This is my one and only aim
One fine day, overnight, Peace will awake again
Listen, my beloved ones
We will see eachother again
After all this evil and misfortune
In happy anticipation
We will celebrate our reunion
At home, on the quiet
That year 1943 my father died. He passed away in June, the month of his birth, at the age of 48, when felling a tree somewhere in the Perm region. I was working in the Kirovsk region for the lumbering industry, too, but I have only seen horrible trees and black clouds of mosquitos in that woodland area. My father, however, had seen the sun and flowers, and he had listened to the singing of the birds!”
Sibirische Zeitung plus No. 10 (40), 10/2001 (newspaper edited in Novosibirsk)